"It is because the contemporary alternatives seem so one-sided and are not more evidently solutions to the problems which Thomas faced, and partly solved, that we return to him and to the tradition of theology and philosophy in which his Summa Theologiae appears: theology as the science of the first principle and this as the total knowledge of reality in its unity." -- Wayne J. Hankey, God in Himself (Oxford University Press, 1987), p.159.

Friday, January 28, 2011

1a 2ae q59 a4: Whether all the moral virtues are about the passions? No.

Now reason directs, not only the passions of the sensitive appetite, but also the operations of the intellective appetite, i.e. the will, which is not the subject of a passion, as stated above (q22 a3).

The moral virtues are not all about pleasures and pains, as being their proper matter, but as being something resulting from their proper acts. For every virtuous man takes pleasure in acts of virtue, and is pained by the contrary.